June 19, 2011 Truth isn’t just stranger than fiction — it’s faster. In an espionage novel I wrote in 2007, I created what was then a futuristic million-volt stun gun disguised as an iPhone. Today, you can buy an even more potent stun gun online, albeit tricked out as a BlackBerry. [more]

10/24/2012 I don't like uncertainty. The current presidential polls -- Gallup with Romney leading by three percent, CBS with Obama up by two percent, aggregators split on whose nose is ahead -- are a hotbed of uncertainty. Fortunately there are veritable election oracles I can turn to instead: gamblers. [more]

September 2008 When you enter Stewart Dudley’s dimly lit warehouse in Birmingham, Alabama, you breathe in a bouquet of steel, leather, motor oil, and antiquity. As your eyes acclimate, you’re dazzled by chrome and more fins than there are at SeaWorld. Classic American car junkies: This is your Willy Wonka factory. Those of you who don’t know a Corvette from a Chevette: You’ll still be transfixed by the details, like the phonograph in the magenta, metallic, and lilac convertible. Who knew record players were a factory option in ’56 Plymouths?

September 28, 2010 In the last two years, my work as a national security reporter brought me into contact with an array of bright and gallant intelligence community personnel ranging from a temp at the National Security Agency to the director of the CIA. As it happens, the source who had the greatest influence on my latest espionage novel was a civilian who distributes cheap spy gadgets from his father’s basement.

August 26, 2013 Sixty summers ago, long before the advent of pre-K soccer leagues, before there were rock-climbing camps, and before elementary schoolers began flying cross-country to compete in video game tournaments, there was baseball and only baseball. And kids couldn’t get enough of it. [more]